Black History: “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud!”

Posted on February 4, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My first three posts this Black History Month have invoked Carter G. Woodson, “the father of Black history,” and his seminal work, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926. Most importantly, Woodson, the creator of Black History Month, gave Black folk something to be proud of.

In my post of February 3, 2024, “Correcting the Miseducation of the Negro,” I referenced my educational odyssey, which continues to this day — I am a lifelong learner. There is nothing more important in one’s educational journey then, first and foremost, to learn one’s history; for Black people this is Black history, which is given short shrift within American history courses, though Black history is American history! Black history, including Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 Project, is not “revisionistic.” The term is used negatively, as if correcting the historical record of exclusions and whitewashing of American history is made up history, though the mythological and propagandistic nature of American history is not called into question. And as I previously wrote, at 17, in my first year of college, I was introduced to critical thinking and instructed to question every theory and position I encountered.

During my educational odyssey, I remember all the Black teachers I had, at first not because they made a great impression on me, but because they were Black. Sadly, from pre-k to 12th grade, I only had three Black teachers: Mrs. R in elementary school (PS 148); Mr. J. in intermediate school (IS 318); and Mr. R. at Alexander Hamilton (now Paul Robeson) High School. Mrs. R. was “motherly” — we all thought of her as our mother. She believed in us and believed that the world we were inheriting would be much better than hers. Misters J. and R. were music teachers. Mr. J. taught us that music resided within us, within our souls, and that our heartbeats were like the drumroll heard at creation. And though Mr. J. did not reference W.E.B. DuBois’ “gift of story and song,” he instructed us how to embody a song and make it our own! To this day, my favorite song is, “Touch Me in the Morning,” by Diana Ross, to which we sang out our little hearts, which I learned by heart in Mr. J’s chorus class. We sang the song as if as teenagers we knew what love was, to have it, and to lose it. Mr. R. was the coolest and stylish teacher I had through 10th grade. He was cultured in the way that white folk think of culture, but he embodied that “duality” DuBois wrote about, American and African. Mr. R. had us listen to Bach, and we watched how it transported him as we listened, and from simply watching him we learned about the transcendent nature of music, of the Arts. And because we were living through the Black Power Era, Mr. R. gave us heavy doses of James Brown, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud!” Whenever I left Mr. R’s class, I held my head high and walked with the rhythm of the drumbeat of my heart.

Black history is the heartbeat of America.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, race | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Correcting The Miseducation of the Negro

Posted on February 3, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Carter G. Woodson’s seminal book, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926, is a book Black folk should periodically revisit, perhaps every three years, ideally every year.  If you are Black and you have not read the book, then I strongly suggest that you read it this Black History Month.  I would not go as far as saying that if you are Black and have not read the book then you are miseducated, but I would think of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Tom, U.S. Senator Uncle Tom Scott from South Carolina, and Aunt Jemima Candace Owens, and I would bet my last dollar that these miseducated Negros have not read the book.

It is not surprising that Senator Uncle Tom Scott hails from the state that in 1739 passed the first law which prohibited teaching an enslaved person to read and write, punishable by a fine of 100 pounds and six months in prison.  Note that today that 100 pounds would be equivalent to 25,306 pounds.  For context, New York State currently annually spends about $25,139 per student on public education (pre-k through 12th grade).

I am a product of New York City’s public education system, and in it I learned readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic.  From pre-k through 12th grade, I would not have thought of myself as miseducated.  At 17, my first year at Russell Sage College, in a Rhetoric course, I learned about Trivium – the elementary three: General Grammar, Aristotelian Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.  It was in this class that I also learned the first lesson of the Humanities: “know thyself.”  Education must first revolve around self-knowledge.  For a Black person, that would entail having books like The Miseducation of the Negro as part of the curriculum.  Even with this discovery, I didn’t think of myself as miseducated, but I was definitely deceived.  You know that a class has made a life-changing impression on you when 46 years later you remember one of the primary texts, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, by Nicholas Capaldi. (A year ago, when our daughter was a sophomore in college, I sent her this book.)

When the laws prohibiting teaching enslaved people to read or write were no more, Black children could not theoretically be denied education because of the Compulsory Education Act (1852), which required all children between the ages of 8 and 14 to attend school for at least three months out of the year.  In 1964, the age of eligibility was raised from 15 to 16.

When I think of myself as a 16-year-old, I did not know that in a year a course would change my educational trajectory.  I am thankful for that educator who taught me the importance of critical thinking, to call everything into question, that dissecting a theory was more important than remembering its core principles.  I learned to ask questions, even if only to myself.  First, did the theory in question hold up under scrutiny?  The whitewashed version of American history does not hold up under scrutiny.

Without getting into the politics of education, we know that the so-called “separate but equal” clause articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) would give ol’ Jim Crow (segregation) legal standing, and not until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) would the Supremes revisit this “thinking” and cut ol’ Jim Crow’s legs from under him, but the battle against a segregated and inferior educational system continues to this day.

What I learned during my educational odyssey was that I had to take responsibility and supplement my formal education by learning about myself and my people, the first lesson of the Humanities.  Then I would go on to the second lesson: learning about other people and how we and my ancestors have interacted in America since 1619.  When I was learning about myself and the history of my people, there was no 1619 Project.  Ironically, when Black folk seek to correct the inaccurate historical record written by white conquerors, it is called “reversionistic” instead of “corrective.”  The criticism of the 1619 Project, and of Critical Race Theory, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, are part of a legacy of keeping not only Black folk miseducated, but also white folk.

My Black History Month Challenge to both Black folk and white folk, is to begin the journey of our collective miseducation by starting with reading Carter G. Woodson’s book, The Miseducation of the Negro.  I would caution folk that Black folk in America are not the only miseducated people; we simply bear a heavier burden by being miseducated.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Education, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Slavery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

From The Miseducation of the Negro to Critical Race Theory

Posted on February 2, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Carter G. Woodson, “the father of Black History,” wrote The Miseducation of the Negro in 1926. Woodson earned his PhD from Harvard University, and during his academic career served as the Dean of Howard University, an historically Black research university, established March 2, 1867, nearly two years after the end of America’s Civil War.

One hundred and fifty-nine years after the end of the Civil War, America is in the midst of Uncivil Culture Wars, around Critical Race Theory (CRT), diversity, equity, and inclusion, with some white people waving the “cancel culture” flag, not surrendering to the fact that 2024 is not Antebellum America, or Jim Crow America, where white folk were not held accountable for crimes against Black humanity, including dehumanizing language to refer to Black folk that cut right to the core of their being. Whenever I hear a white person shout “cancel culture,” I know that it’s a clarion call to what some white folk think of as “the good ol’ days,” when Black folk knew their place or faced the consequences of mob violence, culminating in the Day of the Rope, becoming the strangest of “strange fruit” if they didn’t stay in their place.

“Strange Fruit,” as sung by Billie Holiday, is haunting. It’s the anti-National Anthem that haunts America. Picture “Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,” and picture the postcards of this violence preserved for posterity, white men, women, and children mugging for the camera around a Black body that often was brutalized beyond human recognition, and the denial and whitewashing of this history, which is pushed into the shadows and “relegated” to Black history, though as I have written elsewhere, Black history is American history.

At its core, CRT places people of African descent at the center of the study of history and the human experience, which is perhaps why there is so much resistance from some white people towards CRT. To borrow a phrase from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, CRT is about “speaking the unspeakable.” In Morrison’s lecture on this, it is not about “canceling” the thought and ideas of white people but making room on the Academic mantel for Black folk, and others.

Because most white folk have almost always seen Black folk as “the other,” CRT is anathema. It forces white folk to listen to those speaking the unspeakable, and they don’t like what they hear, when the ideals of America, and some white people, are put on trial, and as in most American trials, the verdict is a foregone conclusion. Guilty as charged.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, race, Slavery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Siren Song of Mass Murder

Posted on October 26, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The latest mass murder in America, in Lewiston, Maine, sounds like a broken record, a siren song.  In the tenth month of this year, America has experienced and witnessed more than 500 mass murders.  Still, the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, and assault weapons are easily accessible.  Politicians and talking heads are talking about the “mental health” of “the person of interest” in this latest mass murder, who may have spent two weeks in a mental health facility.  The suspect, who doesn’t deserve to be called by name, may have previously heard voices and wanted to do harm to other reservists!  (The suspect is believed to be in the Army Reserve.)

When I was in my early 20s, working as a paralegal, I first came across someone with mental health issues.  He was in prison, serving 15 years to life, for a homicide.  The voices in his head had told him to kill a random stranger on a New York City Street.  How many times have we heard that people charged with murder heard voices, that the voices told them to kill someone?  My encounter with J.C. (a fictional name, to protect the guilty), revolved around a parole board appeal.  He had recently went to his first parole board appearance after 15 years in prison.  He was denied, held for the maximum 24 months before he would make a reappearance.  I filed his appeal papers, requesting the transcripts of the parole hearing.  A month later he brought the transcripts to my office in the prison.  He sat across from me, rocking back and forth like he was on a rocking horse, as I read the transcripts.  At one point, one of the parole commissioners asked J.C. if he still heard the voices.  In the slow speech of someone on Thorazine, he answered in the affirmative.  “What do the voices say to you?” the parole commissioner asked.  J.C.’s response was prosaic.  He said the voices would tell him when to get out of bed, to wash up, to take out the trash.  The parole commissioner continued with this line of questioning, as I watched J.C. rock back and forth faster and faster.  He must have divined that I was at the part in the transcripts about the voices.  I looked at him with one eye, continued to read with the other.  “If you were put in the same circumstances, and the voices told you to kill, would you?”  I knew the answer to this trick question.  In the same state of mind, of course he would do the same thing.  “Yes,” he answered.  “I had no choice.”

I agreed with the parole board not to release J.C., but he should not have been in prison 15 years later, regressed to that same state of mind where he would do the same thing.  This was my first parole case, and then, I knew that something was fundamentally wrong with this process.  It seemed like the parole commissioner was making sport of someone who had a serious mental health issue.  I did everything in my power, but J.C.’s administrative parole board appeal was denied, as well as his Article 78 proceeding in the county Supreme Court.  I don’t know what became of J.C., but I imagine that parole never released him, and that he died in prison with that siren song in his head.

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Netflix’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Posted on October 20, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I just finished binge-watching Netflix’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” ostensibly about Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, with a modern twist.  People familiar with Poe’s works will see that much of his work beyond “The Fall of the House of Usher” is woven into this eight-episode “season.”

I was first introduced to Poe in college, and I confess that I haven’t read him since. I read his short stories, including “The Gold-Bug,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “Ligeia,” and of course “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and his poems, “The Raven, “Anabel Lee,” “The City in the Sea,” and “Lenore.”  In one way or another, elements of these stories and poems by Poe find their way into the episodes, sometimes as characters, such as Anabel Lee, Lenore, Griswold, Tamerlane, and Auguste Duphin.

The language in Netflix’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is by turns vulgar and poetic.  Verna, a principal but “dark” character throughout the stories, offers the following to one of the other characters: “Language in its highest expression is musical.”  The music throughout the series ranges from classical to disco.  But what ties the story together, what tells the story, is its poetry.  Verna says, “What’s a poem, after all, if not a safe space for a difficult truth.”  (Poets should love that line!)  Poe wrote about difficult truths.

Poe was also a cryptographer.  I won’t give it away, but with a little detective work, there’s something for the viewer to decipher.

Finally, if you haven’t read “The Fall of the House of Usher,” you can still watch and enjoy the Netflix “series.”  However, if you have read a little Poe, beginning with the title story, as well as the poems mentioned herein, you will better appreciate the story and the genius of Poe.

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A NYC Subway Story: Just Another Day in the ‘Hood!

Posted on October 13, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

At the Utica Avenue train station (in Crown Heights, Brooklyn), a peripatetic philosophical “passenger” is lecturing two of New York’s Finest.  He tells them that they don’t patrol the streets “to serve and protect” the people,” but to perpetuate the illusion of public safety.  He then tells the police officers, “You are part of the biggest gang in New York City!”  The officers simply stand there, just another day in the neighborhood, another subway story.  The officers also demonstrate remarkable restraint, in that the philosopher is all up in their personal space.  He could easily have ended up in a chokehold!

#SometimesBlueKnightsWearBlackHats

Posted in ezwwaters, NYPD, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Pascal’s wager — Don’t bet against God!

Posted on October 8, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My morning meditation was on Pascal’s wager.  Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth-century French Mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian.  Pascal’s wager was posthumously published in Pensées (“Thoughts”).  The wager essentially states that if you bet against the existence of God and God does in fact exist, then you lose “an eternity in Heaven in [the]Abrahamic tradition,” and are subject to “boundless losses associated [with] eternity in Hell.”  On the other hand, if God does not exist, then what have you lost?  Finite pleasures and luxuries in this world.

Two of my oldest and dearest friends are Christian and Muslim, both part of the Abrahamic religions.

From the Crusades to the present day, Christians and Muslims have engaged in actual and theological wars.  The followers of both religions believe that they have “exclusive access to divine truth.”  What I have learned in my study of theology, is that you can’t win a debate from the confessional-religious approach, which is rooted in belief.  We can look at and analyze the history and interactions of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in order of historical revelation, and even deconstruct the literary motifs in their Holy Books, but we cannot, though we do, debate about belief.  If I have not learned anything from my studies, I have learned that belief is essentially not up for debate, regardless of your faith tradition.

I have this vision…that Jews, Christians, and Muslims will all meet in the afterlife, and because they didn’t bet against God, they have made and secured their places.

In these religious debates, we often don’t hear about the core things the Abrahamic (Ibrahim) religions have in common, only the differences, where we are, at the very least, willing to engage in a war of words.

I have this vision, which isn’t up for debate, because it’s my dream, that Jews, Christians, and Muslims will all meet in the afterlife, and because they didn’t bet against God, they have made and secured their places.  To paraphrase Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese American writer, poet, visual artist and philosopher, the major religions are like the fingers on the hand of God, all leading to God.

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Black Youthful Fate

Posted on October 1, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

As youth they couldn’t wait
To reach for the very stars
For them no such thing as fate
As youth they couldn’t wait
To reach for the very stars

Their dreams never appeared to be too far
For them no such thing as fate
They’d be driving their own luxury cars
Their dreams never appeared to be too far
For them no such thing as fate

The Watchers had already foretold their fate
From windows reinforced with bars
They wouldn’t live long enough to mate
The Watchers had already foretold their fate
From windows reinforced with bars

Their date with destiny couldn’t wait
They’d never reach the stars
Too soon they’d be introduced to fate
Their date with destiny couldn’t wait
They’d never reach the stars

Dreams falling from the sky like dead stars
Rushing headfirst toward their fate
Dreams crashed from joy riding in cars
Dreams falling from the sky like dead stars
Rushing headfirst toward their fate

their fate

Posted in ezwwaters, Growing Up, Poetry, raising black boys | 2 Comments

The Watermelon Man in Williamsburg — “Only in New York!”

Posted on September 26, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

If you live in New York City, or if you have visited NYC, then you probably have an “Only in New York Story.”

I am walking down the street in Williamsburg, the land of Hasidim and Hipsters, when I come across a group, mostly white people, with a couple of Black people sprinkled among them, being led by a tour guide.

If you live In New York City, then you are bound to bump into tourists, some led by tour guides.  But this group catches my attention.  As the tour guide delivers his spiel, I can’t take my eyes off of four people.  They are rolling a large watermelon down the street.  It is the largest watermelon I have ever seen.  It is the size of a Mercedes Sprinter.  “Only in New York!” I mutter under my breath.  Out of curiosity, I join the tourists.  The tour guide is talking about the Great Migration of Hipsters into Williamsburg. I look around, see Hipsters here and there, totally not representing or defining Brooklyn cool.  I look back at the men pushing the ginormous watermelon through the streets of Williamsburg.  They stop at a red light.  The tour guide says that at one time Williamsburg was overrun with crime, and that the number one crime was the theft of watermelon.  He is demonstrating how safe the neighborhood is now by having the four tourists roll the gigantic watermelon down the street.  At this time, I’ve had enough!  I’m a born and bred Brooklynite, from what was designated as East Williamsburg. I can’t broker lies about my beloved borough, now considered the “coolest City on the planet.”  Don’t give Hipsters credit for that!  Disgusted, I jump on top of the watermelon and start hacking at it with a machete, but I can’t cut through the rind.  I jump off the watermelon, push the tourists pushing it out of the way, and give the watermelon a swift kick.  It rolls into oncoming traffic, right into a Mercedes Sprinter, which it almost overturns.  Jaded New Yorkers are aghast.  We have seen everything, but not a gigantic watermelon rolling down the street!

The tour guide points at me, yells, “Hey, Watermelon Man!”  I wake up.  “Only in New York,” I say, “even in my dreams.”

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NYC Subway Story

Posted on September 14, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On my morning commute, as my train approaches the station, I see a Brother reading The Idiot, by Dostoevsky.  (People who know my literary tastes, know that I had a “Russian Period,” when I was reading many Russian authors.  Dostoevsky is my favorite, and my favorite book by him is Crime and Punishment.)

“Have you read Crime and Punishment?” I asked the Brother.

“Yes, and The Brothers Karamazov,” the Brother added.

I had done my due diligence.  I have read all of Dostoevsky.  I am at my stop.  I want to stay on the train and talk to the Brother about Russian Literature.  I want to know if he has read Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn.  People who read books on trains, I think, are not just escaping interaction with their fellow commuters.  Granted, they are in another world, but they are more inclined to talk to someone about the book and books than a commuter on his or her phone, lost in the matrix.  What do you think? I have had countless conversations with commuters reading books.  I have also caught commuters sitting next to me reading what I am reading, writing or editing.  Believe it or not, I can write on trains!  Many a blog I wrote during my commute!

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